Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Have you gotten the feeling, listening to the nearly ritual assurances
from everyone from Dubya on down that "things are right on schedule,
according to plan", that they doth protest too much? (Particularly
since their plans for the north had such a public change). Well,
consider this,
from the Washington Post:

... the 3rd Division this week was alarmingly low on water
and was also in danger of running short of food, the sources
said. Heroic efforts have been made by truck companies and other
logisticians, but a certain amount of chaos has developed, exacerbated
by sniping and immense traffic backlogs from the Kuwaiti border. That
traffic jam also has undermined Bush administration plans to quickly
follow the U.S. military advance with tons of food and other
humanitarian relief to win support among Iraqis. "There's tremendous
fog out there," an officer said, referring to the confusion of wartime
operations, with logistical commanders struggling to figure out where
various supply items are in a system that at times resembles "just a
bunch of guys out there driving around."

Things are messy enough that "senior defense officials" cited in
the article (unnamed, as per usual for this administration) are now
talking about a campaign lasting months.

And that could start to get a little inconvenient, what with all
the other little problems cropping up around the world. Like North
Korea, for instance, which is now variously
threatening to launch new ballistic missiles, and "take a new
important measure as regards the armistice agreement". (None of which
keeps Dubya's ever-hopeful State Department from detecting "signs of
softening" in the North's position). Or India and Pakistan, which
have traded
missile tests over the past few days, amid generally rising
tensions. Or, if you take a slightly longer view, China,
whose leadership is now openly
talking about preparing for direct conflict with the US in the not
too distant future -- a change in policy responding directly to
Dubya's belligerence.

But we might not be worried so much about any of that with the
problems that a few months' delay might cause closer in. For
starters, it would likely make the game that at least two of Iraq's
neighbors (Jordan and the Saudis) are playing -- quietly aid the US
and hope the population doesn't notice -- unsustainable. Indeed, it's
conceivable that past a certain point, some of Iraq's neighbors might
stick an oar in themselves -- particularly the Iranians, who already
have ties to the Shiite population which has conspicuously failed to
welcome the US with open arms.

So, for all sorts of reasons, it's best for the conflict to end
quickly. And I don't exclude the possibility that it might -- for
instance, by sudden action from some force which public comments to
date haven't even hinted at. Which is, in fact, how they got a quick
end to the last Gulf War -- but in this case, it's not nearly as clear
how that force would have entered the country.
And which would make the whole WaPo piece I started out with is disinformation from start to finish -- as it might well be.

But the Third Infantry Division's mad dash north would strain supply lines under the best of circumstances, and the dust storms we've seen are hardly the best of circumstances.
Which suggests that there may be a bit of truth to it -- in which case, if CentCom can't pull a division or two out of a hat in the
next few days, we may have some awfully hard slogging coming up after
that...